Language Development
Conditions
Keywords
Vocabulary, Book reading, Infancy, Parenting
Brief summary
The aim of this project is to test whether giving parents advice about book reading is effective in promoting language learning for infants from a range of socio-economic backgrounds.
Detailed description
Children from disadvantaged families tend to have limited language skills compared to their advantaged peers. While many factors contribute to language ability, two aspects of the early caregiving environment are known to be correlated with child language outcomes 1) caregiver-child book reading and 2) caregiver contingent talk. Contingent talk refers to a style of communication whereby the caregiver talks about what is in their infant's current focus of attention. This style of talking can be facilitated when parents read books with their babies. The aim of this research is to establish whether asking parents to engage in contingent talk in the context of book reading promotes vocabulary learning. This study will compare the effects of an intervention to promote contingent talk against a control where parents are given books but not given any training in how to read them in a contingent manner. The study will include children from socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged families.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALContingent Reading Intervention
Caregivers will be provided with 6 picture books. They will be trained to use contingent talk when looking at picture books with their infants. They will be asked to spend 10 mintues each day engaging in contingent talk while looking at picture books. The intervention will run for 4 months. Parents will be asked to keep a daily reading diary.
BEHAVIORALBook Provision Control
Caregivers will be provided with 6 picture books. They will not be trained to read with their child. They will receive information from other sources (e.g. health visitors and Book Start schemes) as normal.
Sponsors
University of Sheffield
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
QUADRUPLE (Subject, Caregiver, Investigator, Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
11 Months to 11 Months
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Infants must be: * first born and singletons * full term (i.e. born no more than 3 weeks prematurely) * with birth weight over 2.5 kg. Primary caregivers must: * work less than 24 hours per week (i.e., be the caregiver the child spends most time with) * be raising their child as monolingual English speakers.
Exclusion criteria
Neither caregivers nor infants must have any significant known physical, mental or learning disability.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in infant expressive vocabulary | Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months | Parents will complete a standardised assessment of vocabulary, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in caregiver reported frequency of reading | Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months | Parents will complete a questionnaire about how frequently they read with their child. |
| Infant Real Time Language Understanding: Accuracy | 15 months | Infants' real-time comprehension of familiar words will be assessed at 15 months using the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure (Fernald et al., 2008). Infants will sit in front of a computer screen with a picture on either side of it (e.g., a bottle and a shoe). We will measure the accuracy with which they look to the correct picture upon hearing a word that describes it. |
| Infant Real Time Language Understanding: Reaction Time | 15 months | Infants' real-time comprehension of familiar words will be assessed at 15 months using the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure (Fernald et al., 2008). We will measure the time it takes the child to look from a distractor to the target. |
Other
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in caregiver contingent talk while book reading | Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months | Video recordings of dyads reading books will be analysed for quantity of caregiver contingent talk. |
Countries
United Kingdom
Outcome results
None listed